


run deep, run wild

by blanchtt



Category: Ocean's 8 (2018), Practical Magic (1998)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crossover, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-16
Updated: 2018-10-16
Packaged: 2019-08-02 10:01:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16303049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blanchtt/pseuds/blanchtt
Summary: “Why didn’t you do anything?” Debbie asks one night, sitting on the porch with Aunt Frances.“There’s nothing can be done for an Owens man,” Aunt Frances says, takes a sip of the strong black coffee she drinks after dinner, and there’s no arguing with that. “Blood or married.”





	run deep, run wild

**Author's Note:**

> The movie is a bit different from the book, but I've drawn from both canons.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Her brother dies and she stops everything.

 

The last ten years of her life are gone in a puff of acrid black smoke, like she remembers the aunts conjuring up from the cast iron cauldron in the kitchen when a spell went right. Danny’s brand of magic and his charm, gone, and with it too her own use for her magic, her sticky fingers, and her silver tongue.

 

She stops leaving the apartment first, and then stops dressing up, stops combing her hair, stops speaking. Stops answering the door and the phone calls, lets the phone ring endlessly from the receiver. Stops the cons and stops the magic, all the plans she had with Danny going cold, dropped.

 

Deborah Owens—one of the best witches they’ve ever known, as the aunts refuse to stop introducing her to anyone who will listen—simply stops living.

 

It’s Friday night and she should be out dressed up, trawling fancy hotel bars, conning men while Danny steals shit, but instead there are take-out cartons all around as Debbie sits on the floor, half-eaten because she has no appetite. The only thing that breaks the silence is the phone, ringing again, and then when it stops the click of the voicemail recording, projecting the message to the silent apartment.

 

“Debbie, please pick up,” her sister asks, a touch of real worry to her always confident voice, and suddenly, as quickly as she decided to stop living, Debbie remembers when it was her and Danny _and_ Gillian, before Gillian left and she almost forgot she had a sister, and so Debbie sticks her chopsticks in a carton, gets up from the floor, and grabs the phone off the stand.

 

“I miss him, too,” Gillian says, voice staticky over the phone, all the way from somewhere in the Arizona desert last Debbie had gotten a postcard from her. “But you can’t just sit there doing nothing the rest of your life.”

 

“I’m not,” Debbie lies, voice rough from lack of use as she pulls a chair closer, sits down, but it doesn’t even sound believable to her own ears and Gillian snorts. “Really.”

 

“Promise, Debs?” Gillian asks, and Debbie nods even though Gillian can’t see it, clenches her fist and takes some comfort in the old scar that runs along her palm, a pact she and Gillian had made years ago, one of the few things she’d shared with Gillian and Gillian only.

 

“I promise.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

She packs up, breaks her lease, leaves New York after the funeral, takes a cab, and sulks in her childhood bedroom at the aunts’ house.

 

Attic rooms should be hot, but this one isn’t, never was, only warm but with a cool breeze even in the height of summer.

 

Debbie pulls the blanket over her head, tries to block out the cheerful sunlight that mocks her through the window and the voices of children playing outside on the street and in the park and the faint salty scent of the ocean just outside their home, but the sun’s up and life goes on outside, whether she wants it to or not, and so Debbie grumbles and tugs her oversized shirt back down to a respectable length and heads down the two flights of stairs to the kitchen, stomping the whole way down and satisfied at the sound it makes on the old stairs.

 

Aunt Jet and Aunt Frances are already in the kitchen, Aunt Jet cooking up something in the oven, puffy black oven mitts on her hand and checking something with a toothpick and Aunt Frances entertaining six-year-old Kylie with the disappearing spoon trick with one hand, little Antonia cradled in the crook of her arm.

 

“Where do you even get black oven mitts?” Debbie asks, knows that sort of thing isn’t sold at Williams-Sonoma and one of the aunts must have gone through the trouble to _dye_ it. The two older women wear nothing but black, a tradition bordering on cliché which Debbie can’t fault them for because she loves her own cool palette, wardrobe stocked with black and greys and dark dusty blues.

 

She’s cranky and she knows it, might be ashamed of letting it show on her first morning here as a houseguest again except this time nearing forty, but the aunts have put up with a lot over the years, her mother and then her and Gillian and now taking care of Gillian’s girls that Gillian’s too busy sleeping around to raise, and one more grumpy woman at the table can’t take the spring out of their step.

 

“Did you sleep well?” Aunt Frances asks, and Debbie mumbles a reply, says a thanks as Aunt Jet brings her a cup of coffee, and she sits down, lets Aunt Jet bring them all a breakfast of brownies, reaches over, and helps cut up Kylie’s for her.

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

“Why didn’t you do anything?” she asks one night, sitting on the porch with Aunt Frances.

 

The scene’s the same as it was in her childhood—no local kids walk down their sidewalk, skirting the house and sometimes even crossing the street to avoid it. There’s only the view of the road and the houses on the other side, of the park across the street, of young couples sitting on blankets in the grass or people walking dogs in the summer heat.

 

It leaves the porch quiet, only the sound of Aunt Frances’ rocking chair creaking, and Antonia is asleep in her arms, heavy and warm. Debbie shifts her just a bit, looks down the face she can see Gillian’s traits in—her sharp little nose and what’s probably going to be bright red hair. Kylie had gotten the dark hair, just like her.

 

Sometimes, getting ready in the morning, Debbie looks in the mirror and pauses, wonders if she looks like Maria Owens at all, if that portrait of her that adorns the landing midway up the stairs is really anything to go by. How could she have fallen for a con like that, Debbie thinks, the oldest damn one in the book. But maybe it’s best Maria did, because otherwise she wouldn’t be here.

 

“There’s nothing can be done for an Owens man,” Aunt Frances says, takes a sip of the strong black coffee she drinks after dinner, and there’s no arguing with that. “Blood or married.”

 

As much as Debbie wants to believe for Gillian that it’s not true, that the death-watch beetle is some old wives’ tale and someday Gillian might be able to settle down with a man, a good one and on top of that one that that won’t up and die on her like they always seem to, like their father did on their mother, Debbie _does_ believe in spells and the right ingredients and the magic of saying things on a moon dark night, and unfortunately for them all it seems to be a package deal.

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

She’s on her fifth month of moping-slash-aunt-duties when Gillian’s problems upend her life again.

 

The first time Gillian turned everything she knew upside down was when she left at seventeen with a boy from school, cutting their palms and pressing them together and leaving with a hug and a laugh, scaling her way down the porch from their second-story balcony. The second time Gillian had shocked them all had been when she’d drifted back to Massachusetts, returning to the aunts’ old house almost nine months pregnant and then leaving not long after giving birth to a daughter, Kylie. The final time had been to do the exact same once more six years later, leaving another daughter, Antonia, with the aunts before disappearing again.

 

“Where's my tiger's eye?” Gillian says, and this is so not the time for it, _god damn it_ , because they are in Jimmy’s car and it’s dark and no one else is around and neither of them knows where the hell Jimmy actually is, and Debbie groans out loud as Gillian slips from the car, heads back to the motel room and leaves the door open, muttering something about how she’ll be damned if Jimmy gets her tiger’s eye on top of everything else he’s taken from her.

 

Debbie counts the night and everything that follows as the fourth, fifth, and sixth time Gillian screws up, thinks she deserves those individual, consecutive tally marks because several disasters later they’re driving across state lines with Jimmy’s body in the trunk.

 

She cons people. She doesn’t _kill_ them. She doesn’t go to jail for murder. She knows law enough to know what’s legal and what’s not, knows what to do and not to do during a con, and this, carting some asshole home because they can’t dump him without anyone getting suspicious, is the kind of thing that can easily start racking up charges.

 

Debbie swallows the panic that sits like a lump in her throat, has never had a con go this sideways before and doesn’t like it. But she turns a bit, sees Gillian huddled in the front seat nursing a bruised cheek that’s tender-looking and purple, and, well, fuck it. Maybe going to jail is worth it. No one touches any of the Owens siblings.

 

The switch driving duties every couple of hours, sleep when the other’s driving, don’t stop until they reach home and pull up the driveway of the house because Aunt Jet and Aunt Frances are away with Kylie and Antonia, so no one is home when they drag Jimmy into the house and try to bring him back to life, which, hardly surprisingly, turns out to be a fucking disaster just like everything in her life recently.

 

Once they’ve dealt with Jimmy again, Debbie heads to the greenhouse out back, brings out two shovels and shoves one into Gillian’s hands.

 

“You owe me big time,” Debbie says tiredly, and she’s kind of serious but kind of not, because she’s not sure what she’d do if she ever lost Danny _and_ Gillian, and this is all part of being an Owens, right? It is almost a relief to have Gillian here with her, at her side digging up a hole in the lawn near the patio, because even if Gillian’s getting into trouble at least Debbie can keep an eye on her as she does it.

 

They bury him and clean up best they can, thank the goddess a storm rolls in as they’re patching up the lawn and thunder breaks, washing everything clean, and fall into bed dead-tired.

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

She’s happy for once, all of them together in the house—Aunt Jet and Aunt Frances, Kylie and Antonia, herself and Gillian.

 

Gillian has always been the hardest to convince to stay, always itching to leave and find some man to fuck, some adventure to go on, some tattoo to get and some story to be able to tell later. But Debbie can see she’s shaken from Jimmy, doesn’t slip out in the middle of the night to seduce the high school math teacher or the pizza delivery guy, instead spending time with the aunts and getting to bed on time and _staying_ there.

 

And she might be more than a little overwhelmed at suddenly being thrust into the role of mom again, a role she’s never taken a shine to before. It almost erases the fact that they’ve got a dead man buried six feet under on their property, to see Kylie showing her mom a spell the aunts taught her and to see Gillian holding Antonia, smiling.

 

But of course— _of course_ , because Owens women are cursed—after some absolutely vile tequila the aunts disappear overnight without a word about where they’ve gone to except _FIX IT YOURSELVES_ written in all capital letters on the pad of paper near the phone meant for taking messages, leaving just her and Gillian to take care of two little girls who neither of them really knows what to do with, to be truthful, and there’s some huge red fucking flag of a rosebush that’s just started to grow on the lawn where they last laid Jimmy to rest, and on top of that all during breakfast one day the doorbell rings.

 

Debbie looks at Gillian, knows if it were the aunts they’d just let themselves in and no one else in the surrounding county would dare come to their front door, and so the worried look in her sister’s eyes can’t be good.

 

“No one saw us do anything,” Gillian says, but not until she’s reached out and clasped both her hands over Kylie’s little ears because tiny mouths unknowingly let slip the most incriminating bits of evidence, and Debbie only sighs heavily, gets up and hands Antonia to Gillian and then heads out the kitchen and down the hall towards the front door.

 

“Can I help you with something?” Debbie snaps preemptively, uneasy as she opens the door, and finds a lanky blonde woman on their doorstep, standing casual as you please with a hip cocked and one thumb hooked loose in her jean pocket.

 

“I sure hope so,” the woman says, and oh, she and Gillian are both so fucked. “Name's Lou Miller.”

 

She hasn’t gotten laid in at least three years, too busy running cons and evading the law and divvying up the profits with Danny and thinking of their next plan. _It’s not fair,_ Gillian used to pout, the two of them staying up late in high school, sitting in Gillian’s bed. _It’s not fair you got out of the curse_ , Gillian would say, half-jealous but not really, and Debbie had only rolled her eyes, had had to remind Gillian that no one, male or female, was exactly lining up to date an Owens woman.

 

“Where’s the accent from?” Debbie interrupts, asks out of a shred of genuine curiosity but mostly to throw the woman off because this is her house and her porch and her family, and she will not be intimidated, no matter how attractive the federal agent. But the question only gets a lopsided smile out of Lou Miller.

 

“Same place I am. Arizona,” Lou answers, a clear joke because the drawl is Australian through and through, cheeks just a little burned like she’s spent too much time outside recently and blonde hair sun-bleached almost platinum, and Lou is bad news, Debbie reminds herself, bad, bad news, because Lou reaches into the breast pocket of her ridiculous fringed jacket, pulls out her wallet, and flashes her badge just like in the movies, a shiny silver star.

 

“Like I was saying. Detective Miller, prosecutor's office in Tucson,” Lou continues, serious now, and her blonde brows furrow in what must be a familiar crease, getting down to business. “I was kind of hoping to talk to your sister if she's around. Gillian Owens? She might have some information on a case I'm working on.”

 

This is the worst case scenario, all caps. The Worst Case Scenario. Debbie hides the sharp drop her stomach does under a smile, knows she’s fooled plenty of people with it. It seems to only half work on Lou, who nods her thanks to her as Debbie steps back, sweeps an arm toward down the hall in a _come in_ motion.

 

It would look terrible not to let her in even though it’s an equally terrible idea to let her in, too, but Debbie only follows Lou into the kitchen quietly, shoots Gillian a look as Debbie leans with her back against the counter. Kylie is gone, Debbie notices, plate left on the table, and thanks her lucky stars Gillian has the good sense to tell her daughter to go play in another room right now.

 

“Is that his handiwork there?” Lou asks with a twitch of her lips in what might be the beginning of a frown, because Gillian’s bruise is still in the process of healing, a visible but watery yellow. But Gillian smiles her winning smile, the one that every boy from middle school onwards never stood a chance against, stands up, and even with a baby in her arms makes Debbie wonder if she’s just lost something before she’s even had a chance to stand still for a minute and figure out what it is.

 

“If a man hits me, he only does it once,” Gillian says, and she holds out her free hand, motions at Lou. “Can I take a peek at your life line?”

 

Lou obliges silently, holds out her hand like this is all totally normal and lets Gillian take her hand in hers, trace her thumb thoughtfully over the lines of her palm and hum in thought before Gillian smiles up at her, says, “Now, I can tell that you've never touched a woman in anger all your life.”

 

She’s used to thinking on her feet, fast and with just the slimmest margin for error, and that runs in their blood. Always has. Danny had it, she has it, Gillian has it. As terrible as Gillian is at picking out men, sometimes Debbie wonders if she does it on purpose, because if Gillian is one thing it is not unobservant. There is a long and illustrious history to their name and it is certainly not a crime to be a slut in the Owens family, but _fuck_ , Debbie thinks, knows when she’s been beat. Gillian doesn’t even _like_ women.

 

But shockingly to see, the flirtation falls flat—Debbie almost bites her lip to keep from laughing out loud as Lou asks politely, “May I have my hand back, please?”

 

Gillian keeps her smile despite the rejection, has never let that get in the way of things and lets go of Lou’s hand and hikes Antonia up higher on her hip, and Debbie finds Lou’s blue eyes on her instead as Lou asks, “You're telling me you have no idea where James Angelov is?”

 

“I told you,” Gillian interrupts, and now she’s got a hint of something in her voice, eyes hard as she purses her lips before continuing. “He hit me and I haven't seen him since. When was that?” She bounces Antonia on her hip in thought, nods at Debbie and says, “Three days ago. Right, Debs?”

 

She thinks of when they were children, when they’d sit on the landing on the stairs and watch the women of the town come to the back door, knocking on the glass pane and asking the aunts for spells and potions and help of any kind. Some of the things they weren’t allowed to watch, and Debbie always knew nothing good would come of it when the aunts went outside, somehow charmed a dove down from somewhere and took it inside, held firm in two hands.

 

But she saw it, and added that information to her repertoire, and she has only Gillian to thank for it, because she would have run up the stairs and into her bed and under the covers unless Gillian had been there with her, holding her hand, lying easily in the morning when the aunts asked in knowing, teasing tones how they’d slept and where Debbie’s sudden interest in vegetarianism had come from.

 

“Whose car is that in the driveway?” Lou asks, slow and unhurried as Debbie nods, backs up Gillian. 

 

She’s rusty from sitting out here in the boondocks, from being away from New York City for so long, from playing with nieces all day and dallying in spell books at night. At least that’s what she tells herself. Or maybe it’s the pressure, the kind she’s never felt, heavy and sharp. If she screwed up before, a stint in jail for some small-ish amount of time would be the worst possible outcome. But with a dead man buried in their lawn now?

 

“That's my car,” Debbie finally says.

 

“That's James L. Angelov's car. It’s got Arizona plates,” Lou says gently, sounding almost disappointed, and for some reason Debbie feels a prick of shame stick and flare somewhere deep inside, like she’s letting Lou down. It’s not a good feeling. “Come on, now.”

 

Debbie scraps that terrible lie, tells herself to _relax_ , damn it, and slips into a more believable one, laces it with truth and finds it’s a much easier tale to spin.

 

“We stole it, and it's a crime,” Debbie agrees, looks at Gillian and Antonia and remembers why she’s doing this. “You should know, she has the worst taste in men,” Debbie adds with a small laugh, looks back at Lou in her fringed jacket and her jeans and her cowboy boots, Lou watching her not with a poker face like Debbie would except a cop to but with worry in her eyes. “I picked her up and I drove her right back here.”

 

“And we would be so happy to give him back his car, because it is a crime, as you say,” Gillian adds, rather unnecessarily, and after that silence falls over the kitchen except for Antonia’s fussing.

 

“So basically, nobody knows where he is,” Lou finishes, sounding very much like she’s not buying any of it but is too polite to call them out on it.

 

“Correct,” Gillian says, and Debbie keeps her mouth shut, bites her lip, and that seems to be all Lou is going to get and Lou realizes it.

 

“This young lady's name was Phoebe Stone,” Lou says, hooks her thumb back in her jean pocket and shrugs. “Two years ago, she was found strangled lying on the side of the highway. Her body had been marked with a kind of brand, burned right into the face. Any help you ladies can give me in locating this ex-friend of yours would sure be appreciated.”

 

Debbie hums something that’s not an answer and Gillian says nothing more, only bounces Antonia to keep her from fussing more, and so Lou nods at them both, says good day to them both and steps out of the kitchen, from the sound of her boots on the hardwood and the quiet sound of the door closing lets herself out.

 

“What is wrong with you?” Gillian hisses, turns on her once they’re alone because parts of that got uncomfortably close to the whole truth, and Debbie raises her hands in a helpless gesture, snaps back—

 

“I don't know!”

 

Lou is attractive, no doubt, but they’ve got more important things that need to take precedence over a pretty face and tight jeans, and it’s disconcerting that she’s never had such an issue with coming up with a lie before, and Gillian knows it. 

 

Gillian leaves, takes Antonia and goes to find Kylie so they can finish breakfast or at least what’s left of it, and  alone, Debbie turns and steps away, watches from the kitchen window as Lou lopes down the front porch steps and along the bluestone path through the lawn, pushes open the gate, and walks away down the sidewalk.

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

She’s learned a lot from her line of work—particularly when someone’s eyes linger on her for longer than they should.

 

She can play that to her advantage, can keep someone’s attention on her, on her cleavage, on the slit up the side of her dress until her brother finishes his part of the con, or can slip under the radar, pass so easily as a cleaning lady or a waitress or a random nobody that she can touch things and go places that Danny could only ever _dream_ of.

 

But this, Lou staring at her as she sits on the little cushioned window seat in the aunts’ shop as Debbie tries to drink her morning coffee, is decidedly _not_ flying under the radar when she needs it most, and it irritates her because in any other case she’d tell Detective Lou Miller to either fuck off or fuck her, and at the moment she can do neither.

 

“Am I under some kind of surveillance?” Debbie asks archly, and Lou only shrugs. She’s got a pad of paper in one hand and writes things down on it with a cheap ballpoint pen held in her other, and Debbie is willing to bet there’s nothing that bodes well for her written down in it.

 

“Should you be?” Lou counters with a smile, and Debbie shakes her head and laughs, hopes it comes across as exasperation thought it’s all to try to keep from smiling back. _Why Lou_ , Debbie asks whatever’s out there that might be listening to her spells, her incantations, her thoughts. _Why a policewoman? Why now?_

 

She’s dated before, when she’d found the time for it between schemes and spending money, all equally seedy but street-smart women who knew enough not to ask questions and who Debbie never asked questions of either. Never someone she’d be proud to take home to her aunts, true, but that type of mundane gesture had never been her sort of thing anyway.

 

Debbie puts her coffee down, watches Lou’s eyes follow that of all things, a brow raised, and Debbie looks down, realizes she’s left the stirrer spinning in the cup, apparently untouched, and quickly stops it, looks back up and knows Lou saw it. Fuck.

 

“If you want to know something, ask me,” Debbie says, head held high and hoping the bluff comes across more sure than she feels like it is as she crosses her arms.

 

“I already did, and there appears to be something missing from your story,” Lou says genially before turning away, picking up a bottle of lotion in curiosity and eyes squinting to read the brand, and then squeezing some out onto the palm of her hand. Debbie can’t even argue with her about that as Lou rubs the little drop over her hands—it’s a tester they’ve got out for customers. Mint and cucumber.

 

“I want to talk to you more, but I have to finish some homework and, frankly, I don’t want anyone walking in on our conversation,” Lou says, putting down the tester back where she found it and gathering up her things, her pad of paper and her pen and her own cup of coffee, before standing. “How about I come by your house tomorrow morning?”

 

“Fine,” Debbie says, teeth gritted, does extend Lou some gratitude for the privacy she’s offering them, and once again she’s forced to watch Lou Miller leave with a mixture of irritation and disappointment, watch Lou get out the door and a couple of paces down the sidewalk and then check slow and sure over her shoulder to find Debbie watching her before smiling again and walking away.

 

Debbie spends the day pacing and then locks up and comes home after four to find Gillian and Kylie in the kitchen, Antonia napping on a blanket, Gillian with her nose in one of the aunt’s books, and Kylie rummaging around the spice cabinet, perched on her knees on the counter, one hand clutching the cabinet door to steady herself.

 

Debbie shakes her head and reaches out, steadies Kylie with a hand on her back as her niece knocks over vials of things in her quest for whatever it is Gillian is having her help her look for. It’s not her mess but Debbie tries to remember to clean up once they’ve sorted all this out and before the aunts get back, knows leave the house as she found it is the least she can do for causing them all this trouble for them, especially since neither of them are young anymore.

 

“To banish unwanted persons, it says you need blessing seeds,” Gillian reads out loud from the end of the table where she’s sitting with a giant tome open, and Debbie feels her heart grow lighter at that, at she and Gillian working as a team and the thought that Lou and all her questions might be gone as early as tomorrow morning, mind working quick and already halfway to a plan of how she can get Lou to ingest it. Breakfast. That’s it.

 

“What about nigellus seeds?” Kylie asks, saying the word slowly and unsurely as she turns and holds up a vial up in her little fist.

 

“It’s the same thing,” Debbie says, gets both hands around Kylie’s waist securely and helping her down from the counter, and Gillian looks up at her, lets out a huff of something like annoyance as Kylie runs over to her and hands her the vial.

 

“Is it?” Kylie asks, wide-eyed, and Gillian nods as she takes the vial, sets it down on the table.

 

“It is. Your Auntie Deb likes to pretend she doesn't do real magic, but she’s the only hope we’ve got now because we have to banish this woman for your mommy's own good!” Gillian bends down, kisses the top of Kylie’s dark head, and then pushes her gently back toward the cabinet before turning back to the book. “Blessing seeds. Right. Now, what else do we need, Debbie?

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

Tomorrow has to work, Debbie pleads, because she wakes up to Kylie crawling into her bed and into her arms.

 

“Hey, baby,” Debbie says thickly, lets Kylie wriggle and settle and snuggle against her before Debbie lets her arm drop around her. It’s not the sort of relationship she’s ever had with Gillian’s kids—firstly given that this is only the second or third time she’s ever met them, let alone spent extended time with them—but a scared kid is a scared kid, and when she was younger she had Danny and Gillian but Kylie’s the eldest and Antonia at just under one years old is too young to be of any comfort, and so Debbie steps up, squeezes Kylie gently and asks, “What’s up?”

 

“There’s a man in the garden,” Kylie says quietly, and Debbie feels something cold run up her spine at that.

 

“What?” Debbie repeats as calm as she can, hopes she heard wrong, but Kylie looks at her with her grey Owens eyes, frowning like she’s in trouble, says in a little voice—

 

“I can feel him.”

 

Of course it wouldn’t be that easy to get rid of Jimmy. Of course, of course. She’d asked Gillian where she’d found the tequila and Gillian had said only around, vague, and of course her sister had assumed one of the aunts had left it lying around, hadn’t thought much of it until now, when it’s no longer just a bottle of tequila but something more. Debbie shakes her head, lets go of Kylie and sits up and dons a robe grabbed from a chair nearby, slips it on and picks up Kylie and gets her on her hip.

 

“Upsy-daisy,” Debbie says as she loops her arm around Kylie, because the last thing she needs is Kylie crying or Gillian waking up before she can get her head wrapped around this. Gillian can take care of herself, that much is sure, but Debbie’s still the eldest—Danny popped out only a couple minute after her, and then Gillian had come along a year later—and if there’s magic to be reckoned with, she’s the one that needs to deal with it.

 

“Do you think you can show me?” Debbie asks and Kylie nods, so Debbie makes her way out of her room, carefully down the two flights of stairs in the semi-darkness, no stomping now, past the portrait of Maria and into the darkened kitchen.

 

“There,” Kylie says, pointing with a finger as they get near the sink and the big bay window, and there near the rosebush, blink-and-you-might-miss-it fast, Debbie thinks she seems Jimmy, feels her stomach turn at the smug grin on his face before whatever it really is vanishes, the vision of Jimmy disappearing.

 

“God damn it,” Debbie breathes, but squeezes Kylie to her reassuringly. “He can’t make it into the house. He’s not allowed.” He can rattle the windows, he can leave poisoned shit on their porch, he can turn the vegetables in the garden to mush and scare the cats and cause the rosebush in the garden to grow dark and thorny where there never was one before, but even Jimmy, whatever he is, can’t come in without being asked. Not unless he finds another way in. And that’s what worries her.

 

“The aunts won’t allow it,” Debbie explains, which would be true in most cases except the aunts aren’t here and Gillian truly does have the worst taste in men. She presses a kiss to Kylie’s cheek, murmurs because it’s true and reassuring to her, too, “And they’re pretty powerful.”

 

“And you are, too!” Kylie says proudly with a giggle, and Debbie nods, bites her lips and hums because what is she supposed to say to that except _I’ll try my damndest, kid_.

 

“We’ll have a sleepover, okay?” Debbie says, feels that chill come back as she turns her back to the dark window against all her instinct, heads out the kitchen gladly. “No need to wake up your mom about this.”

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

“We're having pancakes!” Kylie howls excitedly, and Debbie sees Lou wince but smile bravely.

 

“I just came to talk to your…”

 

“Aunt,” Debbie supplies, realizes she’s never clarified to Lou who anyone is in the house because anyone from anywhere nearby already knows, and Lou nods, but the gate between them and the fact that she has not invited Lou into their garden and toward their patio for breakfast escapes Kylie completely, who leans against the white picket fence, mouth agape in adorable wonder like only a six year old can pull off.

 

“Do you have a gun? Have you ever shot it? Can I see it? Wait, no—can I hold it!?”

 

“She's just here to ask some questions,” Debbie reminds Kylie and herself, finally unlatches the gate and lets Lou in with a sense of foreboding as she turns and ushers Kylie back toward the table.

 

It’s an otherwise beautiful day as they make their way across the lawn, Lou ambling behind her, perfect for a breakfast outside except for that hideous rosebush which she’d hacked at early this morning with gardening sheers. She’d pruned it down to the roots, knows enough about plants to know that that’s going to hurt it maybe to the point of killing it, but Debbie glances at it, sees little hints of green baby branches already growing from the roots and gets a bad, bad feeling about it.

 

Debbie sits Kylie down at her seat, puts a napkin on her lap, leaves her niece asking Lou questions as she heads back toward the house.

 

“Is your name really Lou? Are you sure you don’t want to stay for breakfast? Can you ride a pony backwards?”

 

“Yes. If you mom lets me, I’d like to. And yes I can—backwards, forwards, sideways, you name it.”

 

Debbie passes Gillian in the garden, heading out from the house with a plate stacked with pancakes, and Debbie slips into the greenhouse, wonders if the strawberries in the corner with the sunlight as just ripe enough to cut up over pancakes.

 

She finds them round and red and plucks a few, holds them in the palm of her hand and picks a few more. She’ll head inside, wash them, cut them up, come back out, and _this will work_ , Debbie tells herself, thinks of that little ceramic serving glass of syrup Gillian’s going to bring out special for Lou and feels unnerved in a way she never has during a con, nearly jumps and spills all the strawberries when she hears the sound of cowboy boots on the gritty tiles that pave the greenhouse floor.

 

“Belladonna,” Lou says, looks pointedly at a plant to her right and knows enough not to finger the leaves.

 

“A sedative,” Debbie replies, knows she sounds defensive but can’t help it anyway. Aunt Jet likes it, insists on keeping it, and Debbie almost smiles at the memory of Gillian pulling it up by the roots as a kid, the two of the playing in the dirt of the garden. Debbie turns around, starwberies in hand. “People put it in their tea to relax, calm their nerves.”

 

“Some people also use it as a poison,” Lou counters, and Debbie purses her lips, knows where this is going, has had _witch witch you’re a witch_ or some form of it follow her all her life, from when she was little and the kids at school picked on her until she taught them not to all the way up yesterday, where the cashier at the grocer’s had hurriedly handed her money to her, the mom behind her clearly uneasy and her kids gawking at her from his seat in the cart.

 

“Which people?” Debbie asks.

 

“Witch people,” Lou replies, looking unendingly amused with herself, and then says, “Witches.”

 

Debbie shrugs her shoulders and looks off to the side, at the belladonna. First a criminal, now a witch. She can hardly look Lou in the eyes, doesn’t want to see in them what she’s seen in everyone else’s. “I guess you found me out, huh?”

 

“I did.”

 

It’s neutral, no gloating or fear to it, and Debbie turns, eyes narrowed and slings it at Lou because she wants Lou to leave them _alone_ and she wants Lou to take her to bed at the same time, and of course option number two isn’t ever going to pan out because she and Gillian are _this_ close to both being locked up for murder.

 

“You should come here on Halloween. You'd really see something,” Debbie says, tries to keep it sweet but can here it come out mocking instead. “We all jump off the roof and fly. We kill our husbands, too. Or is that outside your jurisdiction?”

 

Lou blinks, the only sign that she’s taken aback by it all, by Debbie’s change in temperament and the harsh reminder that she’s here for a reason, and Debbie sees Lou take in a deep breath, let it out like she’s tired before asking, “Miss Owens, are you hiding James Angelov?”

 

“Not in this house.”

 

Oddly enough, it slips past her lips before she can stop it. Something about Lou, about her blue eyes and jagged-cut hair and the way she holds herself, the tan jacket with the fringes and the cowboy boots that look ridiculous in Massachusetts but good on Lou, make her want to tell the truth. Maybe Lou’s a witch, too, because it’s something Debbie’s never experienced before, would abandon a con and Danny with it cold turkey if she’d ever gotten a feeling like this from a mark.

 

It’s evasive, and Lou’s brows furrow, the familiar worried look that Debbie wish she didn’t cause and wasn’t on the other end of every single time.

 

“Did you or your sister kill James Angelov?”

 

“Oh, yeah,” Debbie laughs, careful of the strawberries in her hand. “Couple of times.”

 

It’s like she cannot physically stop herself, and Debbie almost reaches up, almost places her free hand over her own mouth to keep from saying anything else, but just in time there’s the shattering of ceramic and Gillian’s voice from outside, carrying on a thread of a breeze, distinctly upset.

 

“Oh, Kylie, could you make more of a mess?”

 

Debbie uses it, slips past Lou and heads toward the patio to help Gillian, only says, “Excuse me,” and leaves Lou to leave or follow.

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

Breakfast is a disaster and couldn’t go any worse unless the earth had decided to throw up Jimmy’s bones right then and there in front of Lou. It does almost just as well though, the ring blinking away merrily in the sunshine on soggy ground as the toad hops away, croaking vindictively, and Lou leaves angry and stiff-shouldered, clutching the ring and not looking back, the little ceramic syrup container knocked over and cracked on the tile of the patio floor and syrup pooling on it.

 

Is Lou going to call the local cops? Is she going to say nothing? Will she ever see the aunts and Gillian and the girls ever again, once she’s carted off the jail? She’s run a thousand cons and gotten away scot free each time, but this, this fatal combination of Gillian’s terrible judge of character and her awful taste in men, is what’s going to land her in the slammer. Debbie could almost laugh.

 

They clean up breakfast, move inside and feed Kylie and Antonia who don’t know what’s going on and don’t deserve their ire, and Debbie sequesters herself in her room after, paces and thinks and doesn’t let in Gillian no matter how many times she knocks at the door or what she says.

 

Debbie comes to a decision sitting on her bed, flipping over the business card that Lou had apparently left on the patio table while talking to Kylie and that she’d found when cleaning up. On the back was the address of the motel Lou was apparently staying at, some cheap thing down the road and around the corner that Debbie’s seen a few times but never really noticed.

 

She washes her hair and lets it curl as it dries and puts on something nice because that never hurts, a white sundress and a sweater too for once the sun goes down, because it’s late afternoon already, and Debbie makes her way down the two flights of stairs not caring who does or doesn’t hear her. She passes the living room and grabs her purse, sees Gillian sit up a little straight from where she’s sitting on the couch, playing with Antonia like nothing’s wrong.

 

“Debbie, what are you doing?”

 

“I'm doing the right thing,” Debbie says, and if it sounds bizarre to her it must sound absolutely insane to Gillian.

 

“Where are you going? You're not telling her what happened, aren’t you?” Gillian says sharply, and at that Antonia lets out a startled, angry wail, starts to cry good either from being jostled as Gillian stands or from picking up on their negative energy or both, and Debbie talks over her niece’s cries, raises her voice as she walks towards the front door and leaves.

 

“Funny. From the moment she walked in, that's all I’ve wanted to do.”

 

Debbie slams the door behind herself and actually runs, runs down the sidewalk and away from the aunts’ house and around the corner though Gillian isn’t the type to drive after her and stop her from doing stupid shit, and it’s how she ends up sitting on Lou’s bed, watching Lou watch her from where Lou’s sitting on the single-seat sofa.

 

“It was Jimmy's ring,” Debbie admits, sitting straight and neat on the edge of the bed with her hands clasped in her lap. “I know you knew that, but I needed to tell you.”

 

“I think you should get yourself a lawyer before you talk to me,” Lou says, and she appreciates it but Debbie only shakes her head. There’s honor among thieves and even though Gillian only steals hearts, Debbie intends to keep the promise she'd made herself on behalf of her sister and nieces.

 

“I don't want a lawyer.”

 

“Alright.” Lou turns and reaches into a satchel, takes something out and faces her once again.

 

“This is the testimony of Deborah Owens, dated the eight of July, nineteen-ninety-eight. Did you or your sister kill James Angelov?” Lou asks, clear, and Debbie eyes the recorder in Lou’s hand that Lou’s just flicked on, crosses her arms and cannot believe she’s doing this when every bone in her body that’s kept her alive and out of jail thus far screams to get up and walk out the door without saying anything. But Gillian is her sister, the only sibling left, and Kylie and Antonia growing up without an aunt is leagues better for everyone than the two of them growing up without a mom.

 

“Gillian didn't kill anybody,” Debbie repeats. “Gillian didn't.”

 

There’s a silence before Lou asks, “Gillian didn't, but you did?”

 

“What if I told you I did?” Debbie says, looks up from her lap and tries to uncross her arms a little, but she’s too tense, keeps them folded over her chest. “What would you do?” Debbie asks, because she wants to know, wants to know what Lou would do if she were her or if Lou’s ever been caught between a rock and a hard place, a man threatening to run them off the road and do what he wishes with them if they don’t listen to him. “Would you send me to jail for life all because the world was short a creep like Jimmy Angelov?”

 

Lou’s eyes are soft, softer than Debbie had expected them to be. Silence falls over them and then Lou’s thumb presses a button on the recorder—the soft whirring of the tape stops, and Lou shakes her head.

 

“It's not for you or me to decide how he should be punished,” Lou finally says, and in any other case Debbie would agree with her, would agree that if she were caught robbing something she’d want her day in court, too. But it’s not really the same thing, for her to take things and money from people who will hardly miss them and a man to hit her sister and other women too, is it? “He has to be held accountable.”

 

“Well, he has been punished,” Debbie says, and Lou sucks in a breath, looks away like that’s the last thing she wanted to hear.

 

“You really should get a lawyer's advice before we go any further,” Lou advises, and meets her eyes again, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees. The recorder is dropped to the floor, pushed away with a foot before Lou continues. “Now listen. I know you're in some kind of trouble, alright? If you’ll trust me, tell me what you know, I promise you I will do everything I can to keep you from harm's way.”

 

Debbie’s not quite sure Lou understands, knows she’s got bigger problems than mortal jail cells because that rosebush is growing back and things are showing up around their house, a dead crow on the porch now because cursed tequila isn’t cutting it, and if anything happens to her nieces she’ll never be able to let herself live it down. And those are all very important worries, of course, ones that should be _imperative_ , but there is also a part of her that takes in Lou’s slack shoulders and her posture, the way she rests her elbows on her knees, curled forward, and the button-up not quite buttoned up all the way and the spread of her legs.

 

Debbie leans forward, reaches out, a hand on Lou’s knee to bridge the distance, wants to believe that Lou can help keep her safe and wants to give into that something that’s been just on the tip of her tongue since the moment she’s met her, and kisses her.

 

She is a planner. Danny had always teased her endlessly about it, but he’d needed her for his blind spots, just like she’d needed him for hers. She’ll go through a con a thousand times, testing each and every turn for weakness, weed them out and come up with a better idea until she ends up with something bulletproof. It’s not in her nature to leap before looking.

 

But Lou breathes out hard and tilts her head in response, deepens the kiss like she’s been waiting this entire time for it too, and Debbie parts her lips and reaches up to wrap an arm around Lou’s neck, pulls her close, pulls Lou on top of her as Lou pushes her back gently onto the motel bed and Lou’s tongue licks hot into her mouth.

 

Lou smells like spice and leather, like something the East Coast hasn’t washed away quite yet, and Lou straddles her, breaks the kiss and sits up a bit, enough to reach down and pull her shirt out from where it’s tucked into her jeans and then up and off her body, to hell with buttons, and tosses it aside. Debbie follows, lets a hand rest on Lou’s hip to hold her and lets the other slide up her side, hold Lou to her as Debbie bows her head and presses a nuzzling kiss to Lou’s breast over the cup of her plain black bra.

 

She half expects Lou, an upstanding woman, to stop them, to draw Debbie away from her or hold her still and say _we can’t do this_ and _I’ve got an investigation_ , but all Lou does is slide a hand up the back of her neck, lets fingers card through long dark curls with one hand and the other cup her jaw, a thumb brushing against her cheek, and so Debbie lets the kiss turn to teeth followed by a lave of her tongue, soothing the mark she leaves.

 

Debbie works it until it’s a red-purple little bruise, followed by another and then a third and Lou’s breath is heavy and stumbling above her, It’s only when she lets her hand slide from Lou’s back to the front of her jeans, hungry, tugging at the button that refuses to come undone and let her move onto the zipper that Lou’s hands leave her, find her shoulders instead and urge her with a gentle push back down onto the mattress.

 

“Don’t make me get the handcuffs out,” Lou teases, slides hands along her shoulders and biceps and to her wrists, pins them to the mattress and winks to let Debbie know to hold still like that before she sits back again, reaches behind herself and unhooks her bra and slips it off.

 

Debbie arches against her as Lou makes her way down her body, aching slick between her thighs, and soon enough Lou pushes her dress up around her hips and slips her panties aside with her thumb and settles between her thighs, nudges Debbie’s legs over her shoulders, licks up the length of her cunt once and gets her lips around her clit and doesn’t let go until Debbie’s breathless and shaking and nothing matters except Lou between her legs and coming one more time.

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

Debbie wakes up to a crack of thunder, a late-summer storm, jerks out from under Lou’s arm and grabs her clothes off the floor, dresses in a hurry and ignores Lou and runs out the door.

 

It’s dark and starting to rain hard big hard drops that she feels when they finally hit, and Debbie takes a look at the rosebush as she runs up the porch steps and into the house, sees it big and dark and twisting and runs into the kitchen to find Aunt Jet and Aunt Frances are there with Kylie, Antonia in her highchair, stirring the big black cast iron cauldron on the stove with a silver-handled spoon. She’s only vaguely aware of Lou joining her not long after, warm presence at her side even as Lou drips water onto the hardwood floors.

 

“What is it?” Lou asks, the only one uninitiated, and Aunt Jet replies simply.

 

“A recipe for getting rid of nasty things one finds in gardens.”

 

“It stinks,” Kylie pipes up, giggling as she hands the aunts things from the cabinet as they call for them, and Aunt Frances smiles.

 

“It’s supposed to,” Aunt Frances says, taps the spoon against the edge of the cauldron and then lays it on a ceramic holder so as not to get the counter dirty. “And the smoke’s good for the pores to boot. Now, come along. It’s time.”

 

In her surprise and relief at seeing Aunt Jet and Aunt Frances, the old aunts who kept her safe and taught her almost everything she knows and welcomed her back with open arms even after a ten year gap, she’s failed to noticed that Gillian has not joined them, and Aunt Jet speaks before Debbie can open her mouth, knows the aunts can read her as easily as they can the meaning in the tea leaves after they’ve drunk their fill or the omens in the entrails of doves.

 

“It seems we've not arrived in the nick of time,” Aunt Jet explains, and Aunt Frances concurs with a nod of her head, heads toward the parlor room as Debbie follows, throat tight.

 

She steps into it to find there are already women waiting in a circle, older women and a few young ones with brooms in hand that Debbie can only guess the aunts know, wooden talismans locked against Gillian who lies on the floor looking very much worse for wear.

 

“I see our instincts are getting a little rusty,” Aunt Frances says sadly, picking up a spare broom. “He's squatting inside her like a toad.”

 

“This is what comes from dabbling,” Aunt Jet says, eyes narrowed as she takes her own broom, and Debbie feels Lou’s arm around her shoulders, settling steady around her, doesn’t even have time to think about what Lou must think about all this because this _is_ what comes from dabbling, from using magic for cons and little else.

 

“I know. I know,” Debbie admits, faces the aunts and says, “Just tell me what to do and I'll do it.”

 

“We must banish him,” Aunt Jet says, and Aunt Frances adds—

 

“Force his spirit back to the grave.”

 

“We need a full coven,” Aunt Frances says, and Debbie only has to look around the room quickly to see they’ve already met their quota. “Nine women.”

 

“Twelve's better,” Aunt Jet argues, and Aunt Frances looks like she might argue, mouth open to do just that, but she takes a look at Gillian again and must see the wisdom to Aunt Jet’s words and finally agrees.

 

“We have ten, including us,” Aunt Frances says, and motions at Debbie with her broom. “Eleven and twelve, if you’ll join us.”

 

Debbie looks to the side, at Lou, feels her heart pause and then overflow as Lou nods.

 

“Of course.”

 

They pick up the last two brooms, take their place in the circle and let the aunts direct the banishment. But Jimmy Angelov is a tough bastard to get rid of, as Debbie has well learned already, and Gillian thrashes on the floor hard enough for Debbie to worry about her breaking her bones, and when Gillian falls still and the aunts stop chanting Debbie drops her broom, sinks down onto the floor but knows better than to cross the threshold.

 

“Gillian. Gilly, honey,” Debbie babbles, and that’s okay because what’s important is that Gillian’s grey eyes are on her now, tired but _Gillian_. “It's okay. I love you. Stay with me, please,” Debbie says, feels her arm ache with the force it takes not to reach out and squeeze her sister’s hand. “You have to stay with me and with Kylie and Antonia. I can’t lose mom and dad and Danny _and_ you, Gilly Bean.” And unspoken, but just as fierce, _fuck you, Jimmy_ , because no one touches any of the Owens siblings.

 

It takes what looks like a very painful wrench, but finally Gillian goes still and breathes out quietly and Debbie does too, unaware she’s been holding her breath, and near cries because out of everything she’s ever stolen, stealing her sister from death’s doorstep is the sweetest payoff of them all.

 

They leave Gillian with the other women in the parlor room, Aunt Frances and Aunt Jet and Lou and herself heading back toward the kitchen because, just to be sure, there’s one last step.

 

The aunts motion at the cauldron, and Lou gets a good grip on one handle of the cauldron as Debbie does too on the other side, but even so it takes all the strength they’ve got between the two of them not to let it drag and scrape on the floor, to make it down the back stairs and onto the lawn, to blinks rainwater from their eyes and make their way over to the rosebush.

 

Whatever’s left of Jimmy’s evilness is banished so easily that it’s almost a shame— _almost_. Debbie likes to live on the edge, but eve she can admit that being haunted by what’s left of a man who likes to beat and kill women is pushing it. She and Lou tilt the cauldron over and the concoction pools at the base of the rosebush for a moment, overwhelming it before the ground, wet already, accepts it, and in the end the hacked-up rosebush still stands, sticky with whatever the aunts have cooked up, but what’s left of its branches gives off a mist, a dark red one that seems fitting for Jimmy, before it dissipates in the ever-growing torrent of rain.

 

“He’s gone,” Lou breathes, and Debbie reaches out, takes her hand and leans against Lou’s shoulder, exhausted.

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

 _You really don’t know, do you? That heart attack thing you’ve been feeling, it’s love_ , Gillian had crowed, because Debbie had been stupid enough to ask her, Gillian who is so very talented in this area, what it was, to confirm. _That’s what it feels like,_ Gillian had said, as if it were obvious, as if Debbie hadn’t spent the last ten years more focused on jewels and cons and lying than falling in love, and Debbie had laughed because she never goes into anything without being sure and now she is.

 

Now there’s a rented house a couple streets over from the aunts’ that the kids walk by chanting _witch witch you’re a witch_ , a garden full of things she’d taken cuttings from from the aunts’ garden, one of the aunts’ black cat that’s moved in with her and slinks around and keeps the birds on their toes, and best of all, Lou.

 

It’s quiet and calm compared to New York City, but she’s got more than enough to live on and besides she likes it for now, likes waking up to Lou beside her, to slow morning sex, to pancakes, to the shop and mixing soap and lotions, to babysitting her nieces and watching Antonia learn to walk, to hectic dinners together every week at the aunts’ house, Aunt Jet and Aunt Frances and Gillian and Kylie and Antonia and her and Lou eating around the big kitchen table.

 

It’s autumn well and good and Debbie draws her scarf more tightly around her neck, craves that chill in the air and is glad to be done with summer storms and cloying heat and the oversweet scent of roses.

 

“Is it true,” Lou asks, the two of them ambling side by side as they reach the aunts’ house and the garden gate, “that on Halloween witches all jump off the roof and fly?”

 

“We dance naked in the moonlight, too,” Debbie says, looks at Lou and sees her lips twitch up in a smile.

 

“I was hoping you could show me that later, wait until the crowds thin out a bit,” Lou says cheekily.

 

“I could,” Debbie says, not quite a promise but enough of one to make Lou give her _that_ look, and Debbie leans in and steals a kiss before she opens the gate for them both.

 

There is dinner together as usual and then, once it’s dark, neighborhood kids trick-or-treating on the front porch, pure chaos as they run up and dare each other to take candy from the aunts’ black cauldron while the aunts’ swarm of black cats stalks between pumpkins and kids and in and out of the house, stealing bits of turkey off the table when no one’s looking.

 

But Debbie takes a seat on the patio with Lou, a little a ways from the crowds and curious eyes on the sidewalk, watches Gillian teaching Kylie how to fly instead, Kylie in a little black dress the aunts have made her and not getting any higher or further on her broom than little floaty hops that just manage to carry her a few feet across the damp lawn.

 

“I think you should ask your Auntie Deb to help you,” Gillian says with a wicked smile, holding her broom lazily, and Debbie hasn’t flown in years, hasn’t been back to the aunts’ in years up until just a few months ago, hasn’t used her magic for anything other than shady, unscrupulous business, but finds that taking to the air, flying, comes back as easily as everything else does.

 

It helps that, upon further investigation, it was concluded that James Angelov's cause of death was accidental, identification possible only by the jewelry found in the ashes of a burned-out structure in the Arizona desert, overseen by Detective Lou Miller. It’s a huge weight off of her and Gillian’s shoulders and, more importantly now, a little sliver of a start of a curious line of thought.

 

Gillian hands her her broom and Debbie almost wants to say no, begs everyone to just take it back, but Gillian and Kylie and even Lou want to see, push her up from her chair, and so Debbie gets up, straddles the broom despite her dress and gets up in the air and urges Kylie too.

 

Lou watches her shepherding Kylie around a few feet off the ground, blue eyes soft, and Debbie smiles, thinks maybe, once they get bored of playing the straight and narrow, once Jimmy is nothing more than a bad memory, and once they figure out how to take what they have and make it work, that she very well might ask Lou what she thinks about moving to New York City because something about Lou and her drawl and her touch and what it does to her and her just-truthful-enough-to-be-believable lies make Debbie miss what that silver tongue and those sticky fingers can get up to with just the right partner.

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
